The biggest relationship mistake the MAFS contestants are making

Welcome to Hit Refresh. Over the next five weeks, we'll be bringing you articles created by experts that will help you live your best life in 2019. Today, psychologist Dr Marny Lishman takes us through the mistake many of us make when getting into new relationships.

If you’re currently tuning into another season of Married at First Sight and are already finding yourself wondering why the experts got it so wrong again, then you’re not alone.

With demanding temperaments, wandering eyes, questionable communication exchanges, conflicts and the ‘token’ personalities, the show gets you easily hooked for the drama rather than the expectations of young adults finding their true love.

But here we are again with another season of pairings that seem destined for failure from the very beginning. Well, that’s what it looks like from our side of the TV screen anyway.

It’s easy to roll our eyes at the mismatched pairings, but perhaps the relationship experts do get it right, and have been getting it right all along, even in previous seasons.

It’s not the fault of the matchmakers, but rather the beliefs of the contestants (and possibly the whole philosophy of the show) that are getting it all wrong. They want sparks, they want connection, they want commitment and they want love at first sight at the same time they get married at first sight.

They want it all to happen all too quickly, and love simply doesn’t happen that way.

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But this same one mistake is not just relegated to MAFS. It’s a rookie mistake that many singles get wrong, until we get it right.

For anyone who only believes in love at first sight, to those who don’t engage with anyone who doesn’t tick all the boxes, to those who freak out when the word commitment is spoken, to those who ghost people when it’s all too hard, to those who don’t answer the text after the first date and to those who break up too soon because their date wasn’t wearing the right outfit. You are making a fundamental mistake that could be costing you a relationship with someone you could really work with because… relationships take TIME to build.

And we don’t let TIME do its bit.

And I’m afraid that a couple of months isn’t enough TIME to make a healthy sustainable meaningful long-term relationship on MAFS.

Going from numero uno to a relationship of two means change for someone. It takes time for our mind to adjust and adapt to someone new in our lives. It means change to the way our brain is wired.

And change takes TIME.

And we don't tend to give ourselves enough time when we’re going through change, particularly at the beginnings of relationship. Most of us are impatient, giving ourselves or the other person a hard time when change doesn’t happen quickly enough. We want the feelings to happen quicker than is often possible, and would rather give up on a person than wait a little while longer.

This time effect is exacerbated on MAFS, as they get a smaller amount of it to make their relationships work than us in the real world. No amount of psychological profiling or matching core values is going to compete with a lack of time. Add to that the pressure to make sure you are loving up quickly in a certain amount of time. You can’t hurry love.

Happy relationships take time. Picture: SuppliedSource:Supplied

People give up and quit when love doesn’t happen quickly enough, concluding that their partners won’t work. But some things just take time. And the only mistake they made was that they hadn’t given the relationship enough of it.

Any person who is succeeded in a long-term relationship knows this.

Getting used to some one takes time, getting familiar with another takes time, developing trust takes time, gaining respect takes time, feeling safe and secure with another takes time, learning to communicate with each other takes time, managing each other’s expectations takes time and connection takes time.

Ooooh and falling in love takes time.

All the building blocks of a good relationship … take time.

This all rarely happens in the first couple of months of a relationship. And it’s likely that it won’t with cameras in your face 24 hours a day either.

But if it did all work out perfectly straightway on MAFS, we probably wouldn’t be watching would we?